Resident Evil 5 Story Suggestions

October 21st, 2008

resident evil 5 story
While obviously I am no famed video game writer, I did have a few ideas which I think would work well with Resident Evil 5 that I decided to leave out of my previous article. Here’s what I have:

Length of Crisis

Resident Evil 4 had a great narrative for two core reasons. The first one being that it was conscious of its ‘lost in the woods’ horror pretense and hence avoided cliché while feeling fresh. Secondly was the gameplay itself. For one, Leon’s journey to reach that ‘just out of reach’ goal felt like an enduing one that left you hanging and the game paced itself perfectly making your experience feel instrumental to the narrative. Capcom also managed to enhance the complicated relationship going on between Leon and Eva which was well executed.

I’m hoping that Resident Evil 5 draws on these same techniques as they synergize the non-playable cut scenes and in game exploration. Along with this I hope they expand on these techniques. For example there is a lot of possibility for good ideas to be implemented in the village scene with the executioner boss and chainsaw man .

Exploitation

There was originally a bit of concern over the racial profiling of enemy characters. Capcom later confirmed that there was no bias regarding this selection, I’d be surprised if they didn’t make something out of this controversy though. The latest trailer hints at exploitation of poverty stricken countries, I think that Capcom should try to make use out of this potential to write a meaningful narrative.

Some guesses

Along with those ideas, I just wanted to add a some suggestions at clues in the last trailer. You may have noticed the Tricell logos, I’m going to chalk them up as a combination of the T-Virus, T-Veronica Virus and Las Plagas; the previous viruses in the series. I suspect that Wesker is working with this terrorist organization in which there is the guy with the bird like mask, the exotic, open chested lady and the “fireworks show” maniac.

Also at the end of the extended trailer there is the gravestone of Jill Valentine. I guess she could be related to the eyes of the person in the incubation tank at the end of another trailer from last year. I also get the feeling that she is probably some sort of virus infected monster since Wesker says “but now that your partner has arrived, I’ll leave you two to catch up” . This kinda hints at it a little right?

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The Lack of Global Recognition of Video Game Narrative

March 27th, 2008

video game narative vagrant story

Last Sunday was Easter Sunday which for me meant a day with the family that consisted of a stereotypical Australian BBQ lunch followed by watching the preceeding game of (Australian Rules) footy on TV. Over lunch my family conversed over a series of topics such as religon, multiculturalism, television etc. One of the topics that really caught me was cinema and movies.

Our conversation on this topic essentially consisted of family members suggesting movies that truely had a significant impact on them, so much so to warrant the expression “you have to see this movie”. I’ve been thinking about this phrase a lot over the past few days and what it genuinely means.

What I realized was that it takes something really quite extraordinary to warrant such a phrase from anybody. People don’t use this term unless they really mean it. So there I was thinking of how I could contribute to the conversation, I was running through a list of movies which in recent years had moved me considerably. What I discovered was that I could not think of any movies to suggest, all that I could collectively gather were names of video games.

This is where the flood gates started to open I think. The family were throwing around names of movies left, right and centre and despite the thematic being set around movies I realized that the real conversational theme was narrative. We were sharing ideas of stories which had captured our imaginations. Movies in this case were only the medium for which narrative could operate.

This is where I actually started to feel greatly offended because even though narrative in movies was the focus of our discussion there was no way that my family would ever talk the same about narrative in video games. Never would they talk of games like Abe’s Oddssey, Shadow of the Colossus, Silent Hill 2 or Metal Gear Solid.

For me, in the past 10 years of my life nothing has captured my attention and danced with my emotions quite like video games. Video games allow the potential for much more engrossing experiences through interaction. Yet despite all of this, normal, average people such as my family remain clueless on such essential experiences. I heard a fact that even if a video game is a huge success, it still only reaches less than 3% of the global population. This is the sad truth.

So this typical family exchange had drilled home the point of where video games stand amongst ordinary consumers. It will be quite possibly decades (I predict) until video game narrative is garnered with the same respect of movie narrative. You think about the production of blockbuster video games in comparison to blockbuster movies. In both cases an incredible amount of effort is poured into each and yet movies receive worldwide acclaim where as video games acclaimed on a comparatively minute scale. Just something to think about.

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